Apartment Manager sidestories
by Elizabeth Culmer
Summary: Various short fics set in the world of 'The Way of the Apartment Manager' and 'The Guardian in Spite of Herself,' which don't fit into either novel.
1. Give and Take

**Disclaimer:** _Naruto_ is the intellectual property of Masashi Kishimoto, Shueisha, VIZ Media, et al. No money is being made from this story and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

**Author's Note:** This is a request ficlet for socchan, in response to the prompt: _I don't suppose I could wheedle one of Yukiko's early genin missions out of you?_ I wrote it in January 2007, but it took me a year and a half to get around to cleaning it up or cross-posting it, because it's so ridiculously self-indulgent.

"Give and Take" should make sense even if you haven't read "The Way of the Apartment Manager," but you won't have any reason to care about Yukiko, and I'm not sure why you'd bother reading backstory on an original character without any prior connection.

**Summary:** A few years before the Kyuubi's attack, Ayakawa Yukiko's genin team travels to southern Fire Country on a deeply boring search and retrieval mission.

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**Give and Take  
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"This is stupid."

"I know, Ame. You've only told us ten thousand times already." Yukiko shoved her hair out of her face, wishing it would hurry up and grow long enough to put into a ponytail. Autumn in southern Fire Country was hot and humid with the promise of rain -- she hoped they'd finish their mission before the winter storms.

Ame sliced two strips of bandage from her wrists and reached over to fiddle with Yukiko's hair. "Seriously, this is the stupidest mission we've had yet. It doesn't take four people to search one village for a lost necklace, even if the necklace is that stupid daimyo's family heirloom." She tied off one pigtail and turned Yukiko's head to gather the rest of her hair. "He should just have somebody make a copy -- no fancy artwork is worth this aggravation. There. That should keep your neck a little cooler, at least."

Yukiko shook her head irritably. "It's valuable because it's old -- I think it was made by some famous jeweler down in Water Country about six hundred years ago. And you know I hate pigtails!"

"But you look so cute!" Ame said, fluttering a handful of shuriken in front of her face like a silk fan. The gesture went well with her elaborately looped and braided black hair, but clashed horribly with the bandaged forearms, the tight black bodysuit, and the giant shuriken blades slung behind her shoulders.

"Cute is for civilians," Yukiko grumbled.

"Cute is cute -- it's for everyone! Besides, neither of us will ever be beautiful like Kasumi, so we work with what we have, ne? I do exotic and dangerous, and you do cute."

"I'd rather do competent," Yukiko said, kicking her heels against the leg of the public bench. "Bet you Kasumi gets back with the ice cream before Hoshi-sensei finishes up in the pawn shop."

Ame stuck out her tongue. "No deal; I'd just be stealing your money. Hoshi-sensei _always_ shows up before you think he will, and you know some idiots will flirt with Kasumi and slow her down. I told you I should go buy snacks instead."

"You'd scare the vendors away. _I_ should've gone. I know how to bargain better than either of you."

"Bargain, shmargain. Kasumi always--"

"--gets discounts, I know. It's not fair. You'd think the spear would put people off." Yukiko reached up to untie her left pigtail.

A small shuriken intercepted her fingers, not quite drawing blood. "Don't undo my hard work! If you don't like pigtails, you should buy hair clips instead, or find a jutsu to make your hair grow faster. Of course, then I'd just have to get more creative with my styling..."

"Please do bear in mind that your fashion choices must stand up to field conditions, Ame," a soft voice said from behind them.

Yukiko twitched. Ninja were supposed to be sneaky, but Mokume Hoshi was so good at masking his presence it was _scary_. He swore it was fairly simple genjutsu, and that she just had to learn enough precision to handle the chakra flows, but she didn't think she'd ever be as good as he was.

"Where is Kasumi? I seem to recall telling you three to wait together," Hoshi-sensei said, leaning against the back of the bench. Yukiko checked his wallet, but it was no thinner or fatter than when he'd gone into the shop. No purchases; they'd have to keep looking.

"Um," said Ame. "See, you were taking such a long time, and it's been a while since lunch..."

"She went to get snacks," finished Hoshi-sensei. He pressed a hand to his face, pinching the bridge of his nose, and then ran it back through his ginger hair. "You do understand the concept of orders? Please tell me you understand that concept."

"Sorry, Hoshi-sensei," Yukiko said, ducking her head. "It was my idea."

"Don't listen to her -- it was totally my fault!" Ame said, shoving Yukiko in the shoulder.

At that moment Kasumi dropped down from a nearby roof, golden hair whipping out behind her like a pennant. She carried a small insulated bag in her left hand; her right hand clutched her spear, which dug into the ground for balance. Something bright and sparkling was wound around the base of the blade, and Kasumi reached up to untangle it as she walked toward the bench.

"I'm sorry I took so long," she said, "but look! The vendor's daughter had climbed up into a big maple tree at the edge of the square, trying to get something glittery off one of the high branches. It turned out to be a fancy necklace, and her father gave it to me after I kept the girl from falling and breaking her neck. I think it's the necklace we were looking for. And I got the ice cream for free, too!"

Kasumi brandished the necklace toward her silent teammates, smiling. Then she noticed Hoshi-sensei. She blanched. "Oh. Um. Sensei. Would you believe me if I said the ice cream was one of Yukiko's illusions and really I've been hiding on the roof to keep a better lookout and just happened to find the necklace in the gutter?"

"I doubt it," Hoshi-sensei said dryly. He looked at the three nervous, guilty girls and sighed. "Technically, I should punish you for disobedience, but I understand your frustration and you do seem to have completed our mission ahead of schedule. I'll let you off in return for your ice cream."

Silently, Kasumi handed him the necklace and the insulated bag.

Yukiko bristled at the unequal division. "That's not fair! Why should you get a snack when Kasumi did all the work?" There was no way they would have found the stupid necklace following standard search patterns, not for at least another week. Beside her, Ame buried her face in her hands.

"You already know the answer to that question, Yukiko. It's your ice cream or remedial water-walking sessions all night," Hoshi-sensei said as he tucked the necklace into his vest. "Possibly remedial Henge lessons for you, until you can transform without using genjutsu to cover the flaws."

Yukiko fabricated a smile. "Enjoy your ice cream, sensei! We'll get out of your way while you send a message to our employer." She grabbed Ame and Kasumi's hands and ran down the street, pulling them after her until they skidded around the corner.

"Yukiko! Now he's going to be angry with us," Kasumi scolded, leaning on her spear and brushing her hair out of her face.

"He's already mad -- who cares about a little more?" Yukiko wiped her sweating palms against her pants and grinned at her teammates. "The important thing is that now we can go buy more ice cream. Right, Ame?"

Ame grinned back. "You're completely nuts and we're going to be stuck doing remedial taijutsu for months. Yeah, I'm in. What about you, Kasumi?"

"I want you both to know that I think this is a bad idea," Kasumi said as a wide, sunny smile fought its way onto her face. "I should come along and try to keep you out of trouble."

Yukiko clapped her hands in satisfaction. "Great! Last one to the square pays the bill."

They raced down the street together.

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**AN:** Thanks for reading, and please review! I'm particularly interested in knowing what parts of the story worked for you, what parts didn't, and _why_.


	2. The Good Daughter

**Disclaimer:** _Naruto_ is the intellectual property of Masashi Kishimoto, Shueisha, VIZ Media, et al. No money is being made from this story and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

**Author's Note:** I am attempting to feel my way back into writing _Naruto_ fanfiction, in preparation for (hopefully) getting back to work on "The Guardian in Spite of Herself." In that spirit, here is an absurdly self-indulgent story about Ayakawa Yukiko's childhood, inspired by the 2/3/10 word #128 on the **15_minute_fic** livejournal community.

Some background: Ayakawa Yukina is Yukiko's mother; Aoi (short for Tachiaoi) is her father. Yukina owns and runs the apartment building as well as various other properties around Konoha, while Aoi is her handyman and househusband. Generally Aoi would be the one cooking -- he taught Yukiko to cook and do repairs, while Yukina taught Yukiko about accounting and contractors and stuff like that -- but Yukina and Yukiko are 'surprising' him with a special birthday dinner. Yukina is the head of the Ayakawa clan, since she is older than her brother Yutaro. Aoi was a war orphan from a Fire Country village that got destroyed in a battle; he moved to Konoha as a refugee and married into Yukina's clan.

**Summary:** One year before she graduates from the academy, Yukiko talks to her mother -- ostensibly about fire safety codes, but mostly about trust.

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**The Good Daughter  
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"Our building's a deathtrap, you know," Yukiko pronounced as she stood beside her mother and chopped onions and shiitake mushrooms for her father's surprise birthday dinner.

Ayakawa Yukina looked down at her daughter, curious about her suddenly morbid turn of conversation. "How so? I know we're right against the village wall, but those defenses are very good. And Konoha has never been directly attacked in the wars. Slice the onions a little finer, darling; you know your father doesn't like them in large chunks."

Yukiko shook her head, setting her ponytail flying. "That's not what I meant. If I meant that, I'd say this location is dangerous -- which it is, sort of, but no more than anywhere else in a hidden village. What I meant is that if enemies get into the building, we don't have good escape routes. And if there's a fire or someone uses an earth-moving jutsu and the building falls down, we don't have any plans or ladders or anything."

Yukina set down her wooden spoon and turned the heat under the soup down to the lowest simmer possible. "It's true that we don't have fire escapes, but darling, what do you think the water tank is for? There's an emergency generator in the rooftop garden, and hoses coiled under the tank. We can fight any small fires until the military police and the fire squad arrive. As for enemies and earthquakes--" She sighed, remembering Aoi's stories of the battle that had devastated his farming village and sent him and his cousin to Konoha as refugees. "If enemy ninja are within the walls, nobody will still be inside civilian housing. We'll all be in caves and other shelters, under guard."

Yukiko frowned down at the mushrooms, her knife flashing with swift, reflexive skill as she chopped them up and swept them aside into a mixing bowl. "Maybe," she said. "But what if it's a sneak attack? What if they come under the wall and need hostages? I just--"

"You just what, darling?" Yukina asked, laying a hand lightly on her daughter's shoulder.

"What if something happens and I can't protect you?" Yukiko asked, stabbing her kitchen knife through the cutting board and into the counter. Yukina made a note to scold her for that later, but said nothing, waiting for the rest of the outburst. Sure enough, Yukiko continued: "I want to be a ninja and protect Konoha, but everybody else in the academy is so much better than me, and there's so many ways to kill people without even trying, really, and I don't want you and Dad to _die!_ Not like Grandma and Grandpa died on their trip, and like Dad's parents did so I never even got to meet them."

"Oh, Yukiko, baby. Come here," Yukina said, bringing her other arm forward to wrap around her daughter.

Yukiko made a stifled noise of protest. "I'm eleven, Mom -- I'm not a baby."

"You'll always be my baby," Yukina said firmly, "even when you're a hundred years old. Listen, Yukiko -- Aoi and I are so proud of you for wanting to protect us and all of Konoha and Fire Country. But you're only one person. Nobody, no matter how strong or skilled, can be everywhere and do everything alone. You're not the only ninja in Konoha. You have to trust that the Hokage and the Council, the Anbu and the police, and all the other ninja are here to help you."

She pulled her daughter closer, hugging her tight. "You're going to graduate next year. I know you will. And then you'll have partners; you'll have to trust them."

"I'll trust them with me," Yukiko mumbled. "I don't want to trust them with you."

"I'll be trusting your partners and jounin-sensei with _you_," Yukina pointed out. "Yukiko, nothing is going to happen to me or to your father. We have far too much to live for. But if it makes you feel better, you can look over the building from cellar to roof and tell us whatever you think might make it safer. I won't promise to follow all your plans, but I will promise to listen. We'll trust each other to be strong and stay safe. Okay?"

Slowly, Yukiko relaxed into her mother's embrace, tipping her head up and back to offer a watery smile. "Maybe." Yukina raised one eyebrow. "Okay, okay, I'll try not to worry. Even if you and Dad are getting old and stupid, and you couldn't win a fight if the enemy tripped and knocked himself out with his own kunai."

"I'm going to ignore that last sentence, since I know you can't possibly have said something that would force me to make you miss your father's birthday dinner," Yukina said, and hid a smile at her daughter's suddenly abashed expression. She gave Yukiko one last squeeze, then let her go with a gentle push back toward the counter. "Now pull that knife out, find the wood putty, and fix the cut you made."

"But Mom! I'm supposed to be helping you cook Dad's special dinner, not doing repairs. Can't it wait for tomorrow?"

Yukina picked up her spoon and gave the soup an absent stir. "Are you too proud to take orders from a civilian, darling?"

"No. But-- oh, you're so unfair! I don't know why I worry about you at all!" Yukiko stomped out of the kitchen with all the normal aggrieved self-righteousness of an eleven-year-old girl.

As the door slammed shut, Yukina laughed.

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**AN:** Thanks for reading, and please review! I'm particularly interested in knowing what parts of the story worked for you, what parts didn't, and _why_.


	3. Resistentialism

**Disclaimer:** _Naruto_ is the intellectual property of Masashi Kishimoto, Shueisha, VIZ Media, et al. No money is being made from this story and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

**Author's Note:** **1)** This is a comment!fic for **Aishuu**, to the prompt: _I wonder, though, how much [Yukiko] has fixated on her apartment complex as another "precious person?" I'd wager she treats it like a pet._ **2)** Resistentialism is the theory that inanimate objects are out to get us. It is mostly tongue-in-cheek... but not entirely so. **3)** This story is set between "The Way of the Apartment Manager" and "The Guardian in Spite of Herself," probably in late winter/early spring before the Uchiha massacre.

**Summary:** Personifying inanimate objects can be hazardous to your mental health, especially when Naruto is around.

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**Resistentialism  
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"Nice building, good building. _Please_ stop springing radiator leaks and breaking boilers; there's a limit to how much I can spend on you and still afford the mortgage on the place next door. _Nice_ building..." Yukiko gave the valve one last twist with her wrench and carefully uncoiled herself from her awkward crouch in the basement corner.

Behind her, Naruto giggled. "Buildings aren't alive, Yukiko-neechan."

"That's what you think, kid," Yukiko said, pressing her hands against the small of her back and wincing. Next time, she was making Yusuke do the repairs -- honestly, what was she paying him for if he disappeared on frivolous dates every time she needed him?

"That's what I know," Naruto said. He laced his hands behind his head and frowned at the heating pipes. Steam hissed briefly from the boiler's escape valve, and condensation trickled down the concrete wall behind the too-hot-to-touch pipes. "But if buildings _were_ alive, maybe this one's mad at you."

"Tell me something I don't know," Yukiko grumbled, dropping the wrench into her toolbox. "I swear, I have never had as many problems with the heating system in my life as we've had this past year. I know the damn building's doing it on purpose. I just can't figure out why."

Naruto bounced on his toes and grinned, waving one hand like he wanted to be called on in class. "I know, I know! That's easy, Yukiko-neechan -- it's jealous!"

Yukiko blinked. Huh?

Naruto barreled on. "You used to spend all your time thinking about the building, but now you've got me and Iruka and Naga and even the building next door you just bought, and I bet this building feels lonely. So it's breaking stuff to make you pay attention to it again. That's what I'd do, if I were a building." He nodded decisively. "Yeah, that's 'zactly what I'd do -- 'cause it's working! Our building's smart!"

"...I thought you didn't believe buildings were alive?" Yukiko managed after a dumbfounded moment.

"Well, I thought so, but you're right -- it makes lots more sense if the building's breaking the radiators on purpose," Naruto said. Then he frowned. "Hey, hey, does that mean my refrigerator's mad at me when the milk goes bad?"

Yukiko leaned her head against the grimy, condensation-slicked wall and groaned.

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**AN:** Thanks for reading, and please review! I'm particularly interested in knowing what parts of the story worked for you, what parts didn't, and _why_.


	4. Testing the Waters

**Disclaimer:** _Naruto_ is the intellectual property of Masashi Kishimoto, Shueisha, VIZ Media, et al. No money is being made from this story and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

**Author's Note:** This is a slight revision of a cut scene from ch. 11 of "The Guardian in Spite of Herself." I like it, but it was dragging out the plot way too long, so I skimmed over Naruto's and Sasuke's introduction to the trade caravan and jumped straight to their arrival in Nagarehiya. Nonetheless, this is what happened the first morning after the boys were discovered.

**Summary:** Sasuke is suspicious of the man Naruto's sister asked to babysit him and Naruto.

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**Testing the Waters  
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Merchant caravans were even more boring than academy lectures. Sasuke hadn't thought that was possible, but apparently it was.

Naruto's older sister, Yukiko, woke them at sunrise and deftly palmed the kunai out of Sasuke's hand. Then she fed them bread and dried fish for breakfast, turned them over to Tsukene Seichi, a tall, arrogant man with rust-colored hair, and told him to teach them about civilian towns and cities.

"Why must you torment me like this, Yuki-chan?" Seichi asked, grabbing her hand.

"Because I think looking after the kids will do you some good, Seichi, and because they need to know the differences between hidden villages and the rest of the world," Naruto's sister said. "Let go."

"Heartless and practical as always," Seichi said, and managed to give her hand a fleeting kiss before she yanked herself free and stalked away. Seichi sighed theatrically, then turned to Sasuke and Naruto. "You're a bit young to walk beside the wagons all day long, and I'm not interested in playing hide and seek if you try to run off, so we're going to borrow Yoshitaka-san's wagon for the morning."

"Who's Yoshitaka-san?" Naruto asked, following Seichi through the camp. Sasuke trailed them both, wincing every time Naruto stepped on a twig or a patch of dead leaves. The moron would never be any use as a ninja at this rate.

Oddly, Seichi avoided all the little obstacles Naruto bulled through.

"Yoshitaka-san is the old man who wanted to let you drink sake last night," Seichi said dryly. "You have a remarkably short memory... Yujiro-kun, was it?"

Naruto nodded, bouncing on his toes as he followed the rust-haired man. "Yeah, Ayakawa Yujiro, that's me! And I didn't forget the old man -- he's cool, and his beard's all funny and twisty -- I just didn't remember his name. So, so, what does he trade? Yukiko-neechan sells curtains and stuff for spazzy Yuichiro, and she buys all kinds of weird junk for old man Yutaro, so what does Yoshitaka-san trade?"

Seichi pressed the back of his hand against his forehead as if he had a headache. Sasuke almost sympathized.

"Yoshitaka-san sells medicines and medical supplies, everything from scalpels and gloves and basic nutrition pills to crazy electronic thingamajigs that mimic what medic-nin can do with ninpou. Now shut up for a minute, brats. Yuki-chan may not have let you drink any sake, but she showed no such consideration toward me, and I require a little peace and quiet for my sins."

Naruto blinked, scowled, and started to open his mouth.

"He means he has a hangover," Sasuke said before Naruto could start yelling. He'd seen enough drunks cooling off in the holding cells to recognize the symptoms. His faint empathy for Seichi burned away; drunks were nothing but weak idiots. Seichi deserved all the trouble Naruto would give him.

"Oh. That's dumb. Hey, hey, why didn't he just say that instead of talking around in circles? It's stupid not to say what you mean -- it's hard enough to make people listen to you when you're not _trying_ to confuse them." Naruto folded his arms and glared at Seichi's back.

Seichi's fingers twitched toward his thigh -- Sasuke blinked, and studied the man with new interest -- but he pretended not to have heard. A quick flurry of conversation moved Yoshitaka-san and his son out of the drivers' bench of their wagon, leaving Seichi in possession of the reins, Naruto on the other end of the seat, and Sasuke sandwiched between them. Seichi looked bemusedly at the mules he was now theoretically guiding, and then wound the reins around the post at the front of the seat.

"So," he said. "You're Ayakawa Yujiro-kun and... you know, I don't believe I caught your family name, Sakama-kun."

"You're a ninja," Sasuke said. That twitch of the man's fingers, not aimless or curving into claws, but directed toward a missing kunai holster, was the only real sign -- and even that could have been an accident -- but Sasuke was sure. The man was traveling with Naruto's sister, who _was_ a ninja and probably wouldn't put up with him except for a mission. And he didn't walk anything like a civilian.

Seichi didn't miss a beat, just grinned as if Sasuke had made a joke. "I wish you were right, Sakama-kun; if I were a ninja, I bet I'd know a trick to fix my headache. The only shinobi in this caravan is Kurenai-san, our guard. I'm just a drifter with a knack for cards. Now, Yuki-chan tells me that you and her brother haven't been out of Konoha before, so she wants me to explain a little about the outside world. Are you going to listen, or are you going to make trouble?"

It was a perfect mask, except for the eyes. For just a second, as Seichi tilted his head into the shadow of a nearby tree, his eyes looked cold and flat and dead, like Itachi's eyes had been that night -- nothing behind them but decision and will. Sasuke shivered, and then Seichi stretched and yawned and was only a slightly hung-over drifter trying to put a good face on babysitting his would-be girlfriend's little brother and friend. Harmless. Simple.

"I'll listen, but only if you're not boring," Naruto said. "That's fair, right?"

Sasuke held Seichi's eyes for several more seconds, to prove that he was only backing off because they had to keep cover, not because he was scared. Then he nodded. "I'll listen."

"Weird kids, both of you. Of course, you grew up around ninja, so what else should I expect?" Seichi muttered, as if he weren't a ninja himself.

Or was he? Maybe Seichi walked quietly because he was used to avoiding bandits. Maybe he carried a knife; a lot of drifters did. Maybe Naruto's sister put up with him because she owed him or his clan a favor. Maybe the deadness in his eyes had only been a trick of the light and Sasuke's too-fresh memories of Ita-- of that night.

Seichi clapped his hands and then winced, subtly, as if the noise hurt. "Okay. Differences between ninja villages and the rest of the world. Lesson one: I'd bet good money you brats know a ninja or two, but outside of hidden villages, ninja are very rare. I didn't meet any until I was twice your age, and even after living in Konoha for a while, they still give me the creeps. So don't laugh at people who get impressed by genin and tell really stupid stories about ninpou that you know can't be true. Just because you know better doesn't mean they'll believe you, and since you'll be in their villages, they'll have friends around; ten against one makes for a very lopsided, unpleasant fight, especially if you're all drunk. I tell you that from experience." Seichi touched the bridge of his nose with a reminiscent grin.

"You get into bar fights?" Naruto asked, sounding torn between admiration and disgust. "Yukiko-neechan doesn't like that _at all_."

"Yeah? Well damn, there goes another hobby," Seichi said, snapping his fingers. Up ahead, the first wagon in the caravan began to move, and Seichi turned his attention to the mules, slapping their necks lightly with the reins and whistling them forward.

He didn't handle the reins like a ninja, didn't have the delicate precision of aim. And he winced again as the wagon swayed forward, pressing one hand to his temple and closing his eyes for a second.

"Watch the road," Sasuke said.

"That's your job, brats. I'm relying on you two to tell me if we start drifting sideways," Seichi said, but he opened his eyes. "Anyway, remember not to talk about ninja, and if you have to talk about them, pretend they're evil magicians or something. Lesson two: the daimyo are important. Yes, really, and if you offend one of them..."

As Seichi lounged back on the driver's bench and droned on, Sasuke kicked Naruto in a futile attempt to stop his fidgets, and wondered if he'd been jumping at shadows.

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**AN:** Thanks for reading, and please review! I'm particularly interested in knowing what parts of the story worked for you, what parts didn't, and _why_.


	5. Tug of War

**Disclaimer:** _Naruto_ is the intellectual property of Masashi Kishimoto, Shueisha, VIZ Media, et al. No money is being made from this story and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

**Author's Note:** Another transitional piece between "The Way of the Apartment Manager" and "The Guardian in Spite of Herself." This one is set a month or so after Naruto and Shinnin befriend Sakura (...which is a story I owe Aishuu and ought to finish before April, argh), so it's probably midwinter-ish. "Tug of War" was inspired by word #133 on the **15_minute_fic** livejournal community, though I ran half an hour over the time limit. +sigh+

**Summary:** Naruto has a bad day at school. Yukiko wishes he'd let her help more.

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**Tug of War  
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"How was school?" Yukiko asked, not bothering to look up as Naruto opened her office door.

"You cheat, Yukiko-neechan," he said, his voice weirdly flat and sullen. "I figured out all your traps and tiles an mirror and strings and stuff, and you still always know it's me. You're using ninjutsu."

"Genjutsu, technically," Yukiko agreed, "but that's not cheating. We're ninja. If a technique works, it's fair play, remember?" She finished writing her name on a check and walked over to where Naruto leaned in the doorway.

Usually the kid wouldn't shut up about whatever he'd learned that day (or tried to learn, at any rate), and he could talk her ear off for hours with gossip about a bunch of seven-year-old kids she had no interest in ever meeting. Today he was hunched in on himself, scowling, and refusing to meet her eyes.

"Are Sakura-kun's parents giving you a hard time again?" Yukiko asked, leaning on the opposite side of the doorframe. "I'm more than willing to yell at them, though that would probably hurt more than it would help."

Naruto jerked his head side-to-side, just a little. "They're always a pain. I can deal with them."

"So what's wrong?"

"Nothing," Naruto said.

Yukiko waited. If he didn't want to talk, he wouldn't be here. And she much preferred him talking than taking his mood out in wild pranks.

Sure enough, after a minute the kid started to fidget. "Um."

"Yeah?"

"We had a contest today," he muttered. "Iruka-sensei split us into two-person teams and made us do taijutsu against each other, all the moves we've been learning this month. I got stuck with Kiba and his stupid dog tripped me in the first round and I fell out of the circle and got discal-- disquan--"

"Disqualified?"

"Yeah. It was _his_ fault, 'cause he knows I can't talk to his dog and he should've told Akamaru to stay out of the way or go trip up the other team, but Kiba said it was my fault 'cause I'm stupid and clumsy and he said I should be kicked out and--"

Yukiko crouched down and pressed her fingers across Naruto's mouth, startling him into silence. "Okay. Three points. First, you're not stupid. You don't always stop to think and you're not great at schoolwork, but nobody who puts together pranks like yours is dumb. You just didn't have parents to help you out when you were little."

Naruto flinched, and Yukiko hurried on. "Second, of course you're clumsy. You're seven. All kids are clumsy. The point of the academy is to train you how to move -- if you already knew, there wouldn't be anything to learn, right?"

Naruto shrugged. "Maybe. But a lot of the other kids already know how to throw shuriken and hit people and stuff."

"Yeah, well, a lot of your classmates are from ninja clans. Don't compare yourself to them. Compare yourself to the civilian kids -- they're in the same tree as you, only more so. You at least went in knowing how to make a fist and take a fall. I didn't even know that when I started at the academy."

"Really?" said Naruto.

"Really," said Yukiko. "And, getting back on track, the third point is that Kiba probably knows he screwed up, but I bet he was embarrassed to admit it. So he blamed you."

"Because everyone hates me," Naruto said, slumping again.

Yukiko wished for the thousandth time the Third Hokage had left a little slack in his damned law. It didn't do any good to keep the Kyuubi's status secret if everyone disliked Naruto anyway and taught their children to follow their example.

"Maybe a little, but he would've blamed whoever his partner was," she told Naruto. "When people feel bad about ourselves, sometimes we take it out on anyone around us. It's not pretty, but that's just what people do."

"I don't, " Naruto said. "_You_ don't."

Fat lot he knew. But it was nice being idealized, in moderation. "You haven't seen me argue with my family," Yukiko said. "Anyway, don't take it too hard. Nobody's going to kick you out of the academy. Hokage-sama wouldn't let them, and Iruka and I wouldn't stand for it either." A thought struck her. "Hey, did Iruka hear what Kiba said? Did you tell him?"

Naruto shook his head, some of his usual energy seeping back into the gesture. "He was on the other side of the practice ground making sure Shikamaru and Choji didn't just forfeit 'cause they're lazy. And I didn't tell him, 'cause it's not like it's anything new, right?" He straightened, pasting a determined expression on his face. "I can deal with it, like I deal with Sakura-chan's parents and Shinnin's dad. Don't worry about me!"

Yukiko swept him into a hug.

"Hey!" Naruto yelped. "I told you I'm okay! Really I am."

"I know you can deal with people being jerks," Yukiko said, resting her cheek on his spiky hair. "That doesn't mean you should have to. You wouldn't let me or Iruka or your friends fight our problems all alone, would you?"

"Nooooo," Naruto said, suspicion thick in his voice.

"So why do you think we won't help you?"

Silence.

"I do ask you for help," Naruto said after a long moment. "I ask you about taijutsu, and cooking, and math, and lots of stuff."

And he completely missed the point. Again. Yukiko sighed. Well, Konoha wasn't built in a day, the First Hokage's skill with wood notwithstanding. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. You _need_ help with math, trust me. And one of these years, I might even teach you how to keep genjutsu from blowing up in your face."

She let go of Naruto. He pulled back, an ominous light in his blue eyes. "You'll start teaching me genjutsu? Then I'll finally know how to sneak up on you! Ha!" He punched the air, grinning like a maniac. "You watch out, Yukiko-neechan. I'm gonna be the best ninja ever. And then it won't matter what Kiba says."

More accurately, if Naruto were the strongest ninja in Konoha, Kiba wouldn't say anything bad in the first place. Hopefully. But judging by her informal family-teacher conferences with Iruka, that day was a long way off, if it would ever come.

"Sure, kid. You keep working toward that dream," Yukiko agreed, standing and stretching to work the kinks out of her back. "In the meantime, get your homework done early for once. We're going out for dinner."

Impossibly, Naruto's grin widened. "Ramen?"

"You're going to get vitamin deficiencies, but yes, ramen."

Naruto cheered, and dashed down the hallway toward the back stairwell. Yukiko watched him go with a sharp-edged mix of worry and admiration. She didn't know how Naruto got through each day, sometimes. And she wished with all her heart he didn't have to be so strong.

Sighing, she closed her office door and went to call Iruka.

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**AN:** Thanks for reading, and please review! I'm particularly interested in knowing what parts of the story worked for you, what parts didn't, and _why_.


	6. No Wasted Deed

**Disclaimer:** _Naruto_ is the intellectual property of Masashi Kishimoto, Shueisha, VIZ Media, et al. No money is being made from this story and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

**Author's Note:** "No Wasted Deed" precedes the fic I owe Aishuu, which will be about Naruto's problems with Sakura's parents. This story is set between "The Way of the Apartment Manager" and "The Guardian in Spite of Herself," probably in mid-autumn, a month or two after Naruto enters the ninja academy.

**Summary:** Uzumaki Naruto is Kigaru Shinnin's best friend. She has no regrets for her lost popularity.

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**No Wasted Deed  
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_Remember there's no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end._ - Scott Adams

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Kigaru Shinnin had always been popular. Mama said it was because she was sweet and pretty. Papa said it was because she was loud and cheerful. Shinnin thought it was because she listened to anybody who had an interesting idea, and then helped make those ideas turn real. If nobody had an idea to whisper in her ear, she would make one up herself. She liked to make things happen_._

But coming up with good ideas was hard, which was why Shinnin liked Naruto. He never ran out of ideas, and when he was around, the world was somehow twice as interesting.

Sometimes Naruto got Shinnin into a lot of trouble, but he never made her bored.

The weird thing was, Mama and Papa thought Naruto was the worst person on earth. Papa even said sometimes that it would be better if Naruto had died at birth. Papa was the nicest and best man in the world - Mama said so, so it was true - and he smiled at _everybody_ who came into the butcher shop, but when Naruto was around he stomped and frowned and looked like he wanted to hit something, and Mama got a funny worried look around her eyes.

Shinnin tried not to think about that. Mostly it was easy - she just didn't bring Naruto to her house anymore. They played in the parks, or in the big yard behind his apartment building, and Shinnin went home alone.

If they were at school or in a park, Shinnin could usually pull people into joining one of Naruto's games, but the other kids always whined about having to play with _that idiot, why do you like him, Shinnin, he's a jerk, everybody knows he's bad_. It was like Mama and Papa all over again, and it made Shinnin want to yell at everybody for being stupid. Naruto usually stopped her, though, and came up with games and jokes that only needed two people.

Shinnin wasn't the most popular girl anymore. Her old best friend Ino was, or maybe Zenryou Haruka. Ino was just as loud as Shinnin, while Haruka was twice as pretty, and they didn't spend their afternoons pretending to be giant centipedes and climbing trees and jumping in mud puddles with Naruto.

"It's bad enough you're still playing with boys, but even Choji and Shikamaru are better than _Naruto_," Ino said one time when Shinnin asked her to come play with her and Naruto. "Why are you friends with him?"

"Why not?" Shinnin asked. "He's fun."

Ino sniffed. "He's dirty. And he's bad. Come play with me instead. I miss you, and Haruka's so annoying."

"So find a new friend!" Shinnin said. She stuck her tongue out at Ino and ran back across the park to Naruto. Ino didn't follow.

What was wrong with boys? And what was wrong with being dirty? Mama got dirty all the time, working with Papa to cut up animals and make sausage and stuff. Ninja got dirty too, and Shinnin was sure climbing trees would be useful - it was a lot easier to spy on people if you were above them and hidden by leaves.

It hurt a little that people didn't like her anymore, but Shinnin wasn't going to be mean to Naruto just to get her old friends back. That wouldn't be right, and Mama and Papa always said it was more important to be right than to be popular. Besides, it wasn't like she had _no_ friends. She had Naruto and he had her, so they were okay.

Some people weren't so lucky, though. Especially if they got on Haruka's bad side.

Shinnin lay on her stomach along a wide branch with scratchy, folded bark and watched Haruno Sakura huddle against the wooden fence that separated the playground from the rest of the park. "Why doesn't Haruka like her?" Shinnin wondered. "She hates Ino because Ino's pretty and doesn't pay attention to her, but Sakura's not that pretty and she's always following Haruka around like a baby chicken looking for its mama. I thought Haruka liked that."

"Sakura-chan _is so_ pretty," Naruto said, swinging his feet dangerously close to Shinnin's head. She twisted onto her side and pinched one of his toes. "Ow! Stop that; I wasn't gonna kick you." Shinnin started tickling the bottom of his foot instead, until Naruto pulled his legs up onto his own branch.

"Spoilsport," Shinnin said. Then she realized what his protest meant, and why he'd pulled her up into the tree to watch in the first place. "Hey! You _like_ Sakura. You want to _marry_ her. And _kiss_ her. I'm going to tell your sister!"

Naruto stuck his tongue out at her to pretend he didn't care. Shinnin was about to tease him again when his eyes widened the way they always did when a new idea hit him. "Hey, hey, maybe I know why Haruka was being mean to Sakura-chan!" he said. "Did you know Sakura-chan got a perfect score on the test yesterday? Iruka-sensei told Yukiko-neechan when they didn't think I was listening. I bet Haruka's jealous."

Shinnin studied the pink-haired girl with fresh interest. Climbing trees and throwing knives was easy. Iruka-sensei's tests, on the other hand, were hard. If Sakura could get a perfect score, maybe she could help Shinnin and Naruto do better. (Well, help Shinnin. Naruto was hopeless; he always got distracted halfway through problems, and he was awful at math even after Shinnin taught him Mama's addition song.)

"Do you think she'd help us study?" Shinnin asked.

Naruto made a face. "Maybe you. Nobody ever wants to help me."

Shinnin tore a handful of leaves off a side branch and threw them up at Naruto. "Hey! Don't I count?"

"Well, yeah, but..." Naruto trailed off and shrugged. Shinnin threw another handful of leaves at him, but she knew what he meant. Everybody else got stupid the minute they heard Naruto's name. Even Mama and Papa. So Haruno Sakura probably wouldn't help him.

Except, wait. "Maybe Sakura won't be mean to you," Shinnin said, testing the edges of a new thought. "Haruka got everybody to call her names, so she doesn't have any friends. That means she really needs a friend, right? So if we're nice to her, she'll be nice to us even though everybody else thinks you're weird. Maybe she'll even _like_ you."

Naruto brushed leaves off his orange jacket and pants, letting them fall back down onto Shinnin. "I dunno. Nobody but me talked to Kiba the first week, and he still hates me."

"That's because Kiba's a stupid jerk," Shinnin said firmly, combing a leaf out of her ponytail. They'd have to do something horrible to him again soon, just because. But right now there were more important things to do.

"If Sakura can get a perfect score on Iruka-sensei's tests, she's too smart to be a jerk, and if Haruka doesn't like her, she's probably nice." Shinnin sat up on her branch and tugged on Naruto's leg. "Come on, let's go talk to her. I'll ask what's wrong and you think of a fun game we can play when she's done crying."

Shinnin jumped down from the tree and ran across the playground, trusting Naruto to follow.

He did.

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**AN:** Thanks for reading, and please review! I'm particularly interested in knowing what parts of the story worked for you, what parts didn't, and _why_.

FYI, since Shinnin and Naruto have already 'adopted' Sakura in this world, when Ino goes looking to practice random acts of kindness on less popular girls, she picks _Hinata_ as her project. As you might guess, by the time the kids reach graduation their patterns of interaction are noticeably different from canon. :-)


	7. What You Need

**Disclaimer:** _Naruto_ is the intellectual property of Masashi Kishimoto, Shueisha, VIZ Media, et al. No money is being made from this story and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

**Author's Note:** I mentioned midway through "The Way of the Apartment Manager" that Yukiko is a genjutsu expert because she absolutely sucks at ninjutsu. The following ficlet is a slightly more detailed explanation of her problem, which is a variation of Rock Lee's inability to use externalized chakra at all. (In other words, I am doing self-indulgent world-building about Kishimoto's rules of 'magic.' +grin+)

"What You Need" was inspired by the 4/19/10 prompt #29 on the **15_minute_ficlets** Dreamwidth community.

**Summary:** Yukiko is a genjutsu specialist by necessity, not by inclination.

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**What You Need  
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Ayakawa Yukiko specialized in genjutsu.

Not because she had an inherently delicate touch with chakra. She started off as clumsy as every other seven-year-old civilian kid, causing herself and everyone around her blinding headaches when she tried to touch their minds. She learned how to gauge and apply the right amount of power to the right moment and pattern through years of mind-numbing practice, at least three hours every day.

Not because she was weak. She could spin genjutsu for hours if she needed, though obviously the more complex her illusions grew, the more people she affected, and the more mental resistance she had to compensate for, the faster her strength ran out. But that was true for every ninja and every technique.

Not because she particularly liked mind games and cheating. There was, of course, a certain satisfaction in making people do what she wanted, or in getting one up on an opponent, but Yukiko had been a rough-and-tumble kid. She knew she could get the same satisfaction from physically knocking someone down.

Not because she was especially skilled at reading people. She learned to observe and analyze behavior through long and careful practice, guessing what images and words would have the best effect on people and correcting herself at every mistake. She worked at that as hard as she'd worked at chakra control -- week in, week out, for years.

Yukiko didn't specialize in genjutsu because she had a natural talent for it. She specialized in genjutsu because she couldn't do anything else.

Chakra was most obvious in its actions on a person's own body, carrying energy and life from the core to the extremities and back in an endless, elegant system of coils. Properly focused, chakra could make you stronger, faster, tougher. Everyone could do that much, because if you had no chakra, you'd be dead.

Extending chakra outside the body was a different story. Some people had strange kinks and gaps in their coils, which trapped their energy within themselves. Chakra limitations weren't quite disabilities -- or at least, they weren't referred to that way, perhaps because most civilians couldn't extend chakra, whether they might have been able to with training or not. But they were devastating for anyone who wanted to be a ninja.

Yukiko was lucky. She couldn't shape chakra to touch the physical elements -- reaching outside herself that way was like trying to push her arm through the eye of a needle. She couldn't do any ninjutsu without spending years carving the pattern for each single jutsu into her coils, and even then the techniques went sideways or stillborn half the time. But she could touch other people's chakra systems.

She could cast genjutsu.

And if that was the only thing she was able to do, then so help her, she was going to do it _right_.

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**AN:** Thanks for reading, and please review! I'm particularly interested in knowing what parts of the story worked for you, what parts didn't, and _why_.


	8. Set in Stone

**Disclaimer:** _Naruto_ is the intellectual property of Masashi Kishimoto, Shueisha, VIZ Media, et al. No money is being made from this story and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

**Author's Note:** A somewhat maudlin ficlet set a year _after_ "The Guardian in Spite of Herself," though not giving away the ending. (Well, it gives away three people who survive, but I am willing to tell you up front that Yukiko, Naruto, Sasuke, and Naga all return to Konoha at the end of "Guardian." Beyond that, though, I am not saying. +grin+)

"Set in Stone" was inspired by the 5/3/10 prompt #137 on the **15_minute_fic** Livejournal community. (Also by Pink Floyd. We keep the radio mostly tuned to classic rock at work. After a while certain songs etch into my brain. +headdesk+) This fic has been significantly revised and expanded from its journal form.

**Summary:** Sasuke understandably still has issues about the loss of his family.

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**Set in Stone  
**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"One thing I do," Yukiko told Sasuke shortly before the first anniversary, "is keep one memento for each person. I never got around to setting up a shrine, but I think I prefer them in a box. That way I can take out my precious memories when I want, but they're not always in my face like an accusation."

She paused, walked across the hall into her apartment, and returned with a small wooden box decorated with a faded hollyhock pattern. "The keepsakes don't have to be anything important, just something to remind you," she said. She unlatched the box and pulled out a shuriken, its edges nicked and dull, one blade slightly warped. "This belonged to my teammate, Ame. She was going to get it reforged, but I lent her one of my shuriken instead. I never got around to dealing with this, and when she died..."

Yukiko shrugged, and put the shuriken back into the box. "Little things. You might try it."

Sasuke thought about it.

That evening, he went back to the Uchiha district. A few of the outermost properties had been sold, and there were signs of construction and change -- ill-fated houses torn down to make way for new homes without ghosts. Sasuke walked past the changeling houses as quickly as he could, into more familiar streets. The heart of the compound was still deserted, home to nothing but wind and dust and encroaching wildlife. He could almost pretend nothing had changed, that everyone was simply inside for the moment and he could open any door and find aunts and uncles and distant cousins sitting down to eat.

Sasuke wasted a minute sitting on the back steps of his house, wishing. Then he went inside and found two of Mother's empty shopping bags.

Sasuke gathered scores of the flat, polished stones that lined the pond, one for every relative he'd lost. He hadn't known everyone well enough to find a personal memento for each person, and it felt wrong to favor some people over others when they were all equal in death. He took the stones home in the canvas bags, stopping every few blocks to rest. He hauled the bags up the stairs one at a time, careful not to make too much noise and attract Naruto's attention. The idiot wouldn't understand. He'd never had anything to lose.

In his apartment, Sasuke stacked the stones on his windowsill, higher and higher, until he had to stand on a chair to place the last rows. They blocked the dying light and were impossible to overlook.

Memory wasn't a gift, to pick up and put away at whim. Memory was a duty.

On the anniversary, he didn't go to school. When Yukiko came into his apartment to check on him, her eyes skipped to the wall of stones. Sasuke had a dozen challenges lined up, ready to snap back when she called him stupid. But she just shook her head with a rueful smile.

"I'll get you an end table," she said, "so they won't fall out the window. You never know when you might want some light in the room."

She brought the table upstairs and tucked it into the corner. Then she pulled two stones from the top of the wall, letting in a sliver of morning sun. She turned and handed them to Sasuke. "I can reach higher than you, so let me do this. Arrange them on the table however you want."

They took down the wall together.

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**AN:** Thanks for reading, and please review! I'm particularly interested in knowing what parts of the story worked for you, what parts didn't, and _why_.


	9. For All the Works and Days of Hands

**Disclaimer:** _Naruto_ is the intellectual property of Masashi Kishimoto, Shueisha, VIZ Media, et al. No money is being made from this story and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

**Author's Note:** This is a comment!fic for **theodosia21**, to the prompt: _Perhaps something during or after "The Way of the Apartment Manager," with Yukiko being really competent or happy or just generally awesome?_ I hit the first part dead on, but not so much the second. Sorry!

**Summary:** A month after Naruto moves into her building, Yukiko receives an invitation to her cousin Yuichiro's anniversary dinner celebration and wonders when she drifted so far apart from her family. Heavy on backstory, slightly melancholy.

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**For All the Works and Days of Hands**  
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It says something unflattering about her, Yukiko thinks, that she could forget Yuichiro and Mei's second anniversary. She stares down at the pointed note from Uncle Yutaro, reminding her that this is not an optional attendance event, and wonders when she and Yuichiro drifted apart.

When she was growing up, Yukiko spent pretty much every weekend with her cousins - in the yard of her mother's apartment building, in the back room of Uncle Yutaro's grocery store, out in the streets, in one or another of the parks that dotted Konoha, wherever. She and Yuichiro were the oldest, born within a month of each other, so they tended to get saddled with looking after the babies. Neither of them really liked that idea - Yuichiro was too afraid something would go horribly wrong and he'd take the blame, and Yukiko was much more interested in playing ninja vs. samurai.

When she learned how to do genjutsu, Yuichiro had the brilliant idea that she could put his little sisters to sleep so they'd be safe and out of the way. Yukiko practiced until she had the technique down cold, and the next time she and Yuichiro were assigned as babysitters, she got Yura and Yume to sit on the floor and listen to Yuichiro tell a really boring story about a fish made of stars that tried to eat the moon. Eventually they were distracted enough that the genjutsu caught and tightened, and they curled up to sleep all at once. Yukiko jumped up and down and Yuichiro clapped his hands, but the girls just made funny high-pitched snores; they were safe until Yukiko did the release. She and Yuichiro grinned at each other until their cheeks hurt.

That fell apart the minute Aunt Hanako came in to put Yusuke down for a nap and make sure Yume and Yura hadn't up and died while she was upstairs drinking sake with Yukiko's parents. She was not amused to find her daughters lying curled up on the cold concrete floor of the stock room, while Yukiko and Yuichiro climbed the shelves and threw wadded up cardboard missiles at each other.

After that, Yukiko and Yuichiro had to figure out games to distract a pair of bratty little girls who were five and seven years younger. They never did get very good at that, but luckily Yura liked playing house, and once she was six or seven, they could leave her to watch Yume and Yusuke and make their own escape.

Yuichiro was her best friend as far back as she could remember. So when did that change?

Not when she graduated the academy. Ame and Kasumi didn't replace him - they just slipped in alongside him, so she had three best friends instead of one. Not when her parents died. Yuichiro was the one who came over to visit each week, bullied her into doing laundry and buying groceries and generally keeping up the facade of a functional life. Kasumi and Ame would have, but they were busy on missions and just weren't around as often as Yuichiro could be. And he kept that up after the Kyuubi, until Yukiko pulled herself together to stand on her feet.

So when did they drift apart? Because they have. Yukiko hasn't seen her cousin in months, not since... well, since he and Mei bought their store and had the grand opening last spring. That's over half a year.

The obvious thing would be to blame Mei, but Yukiko's not stupid. Mei's a sweetheart and she just wants Yuichiro to be happy. She would never pry him apart from his family. (Well, maybe from Uncle Yutaro, but that's just good sense. Everyone thinks he keeps too tight a grip on the clan.) And she doesn't remember Yuichiro telling her all about Mei as he fell in love, which he should have done. He told her all about his crushes when they were younger, after all.

Sometime in those gray, choking months after she lost her team, she must have said or done something to push her cousin away. Yuichiro being Yuichiro, he assumed it was his own fault, taken the blame, and decided not to burden her with his presence anymore. That's just the kind of stupid he is. And it's just the kind of stupid _Yukiko_ is that she got wrapped up in her day-to-day routine and never noticed her best friend wasn't around to shake her into life. Not until the kid showed up to do the job for him.

Naruto and Yuichiro. That's a funny juxtaposition, Yukiko thinks with a private smile. One does nothing but worry and the other doesn't seem to know the meaning of the word. They might like each other anyway... but she doesn't think it's a good idea to introduce them. Not yet, maybe not ever. After all, there's the minor issue of the Kyuubi killing Aunt Hanako to work through.

Still. Thanks to the kid, Yukiko's remembered what she's been missing these past few years. And now that she knows, she can start to make things right.

"Hey, Naruto," she says, without bothering to turn. "Let's go out for ramen tonight, just because."

The kid stops halfway through his attempted ambush and cheers.

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**AN:** Thanks for reading, and please review! I'm particularly interested in knowing what parts of the story worked for you, what parts didn't, and _why_.


	10. Friends and Neighbors

**Disclaimer:** _Naruto_ is the intellectual property of Masashi Kishimoto, Shueisha, VIZ Media, et al. No money is being made from this story and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

**Author's Note:** This story is an expansion of a comment!fic for **Aishuu**, who asked for a sequel to "The Way of the Apartment Manager." Since I was already writing an official sequel - "The Guardian in Spite of Herself" - this fic is set between those two novels. My timeline is a little fishy since I was thinking in terms of American school years rather than Japanese ones when I wrote the "Apartment Manager" epilogue and also Kishimoto's depiction of Konoha's climate is kind of weird in general (which is to say, it is the Land of No Seasons, where people can be equally comfortable wearing thick winter coats or wearing shorts and mesh t-shirts O_o), but I think this story works best if it falls in early spring, half a year after Naruto enters the ninja academy and roughly a year and a half after he moved into Yukiko's building. ("Guardian" starts several months later, in late summer.)

Aishuu, I am sorry it took me so ridiculously long to finish. Hopefully the length makes up somewhat for the delay.

**Summary:** An object lesson in ninja tactics as applied to civilian social relationships - aka the fic in which Naruto and Shinnin adopt Sakura before she attracts Ino's attention, but Sakura's parents are not so keen on their daughter's new friends.

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**Friends and Neighbors  
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"Hey, hey, Yukiko-neechan, can I have friends over tomorrow?"

Yukiko looked up from the mission report she was writing for Heika-san, and frowned. Naruto was dancing from foot to foot in an almost perfect imitation of excitement, but there was something wary and nervous in his eyes and posture. It was over a year and a half since he'd moved in to his top floor apartment. By this point he had to know that the building was his home as much as hers, right?

"Of course you can," she told him, "and if Yusuke tried to tell you anything else while I was gone last week, I'll go yell at him until he remembers to leave you alone. Now spill - what's wrong?"

"Nothing!" Naruto said. Yukiko's frown deepened, and the kid looked aside, guiltily. "Really, it's nothing."

"'Nothing' doesn't make you look like it's still you against the whole damn world," Yukiko said. She set her half-finished report aside and walked around the desk, dropping into one of the tall-backed chairs so she was more on a level with the kid. "Seriously, what's wrong? I thought you and Shinnin - that is who you wanted to invite, right? - were getting along really well."

"Yeah, me and Shinnin are great," Naruto agreed, still not meeting Yukiko's eyes. "It's just... there's another girl in class, and she's really pretty and smart and stuff, but the other girls pick on her so she doesn't have any friends anymore. So I said to Shinnin that we ought to be her friends 'cause picking on people is mean and stupid, but when Sakura-chan's mom and dad - her name's Haruno Sakura, isn't that a pretty name? When her mom and dad picked her up from the park yesterday, they were talking to Shinnin's dad and then they all _looked_ at me..." He trailed off, dejected. "Yukiko-neechan, why don't people like me? I'm not a bad person, right?"

"Absolutely not," Yukiko said. "You're a good person. A bad person wouldn't try to be Sakura's friend."

Naruto brightened slightly. "Yeah, I guess. But if I'm a good person, why does everyone look at me like- like I'm covered in dog poop?"

Damn the Third Hokage and his laws. It didn't help to keep the reason for Naruto's outcast status secret if everyone kept ostracizing him anyway. Fortunately she had a perfectly true explanation ready, but she'd have to distract Naruto out of this conversation before he started asking for any details.

"The people who act like you're a missing-nin are idiots who've heard malicious rumors about you and who haven't bothered to check how accurate the stories are," Yukiko said. She leaned forward and poked Naruto's nose, making him scrunch his face up indignantly. "Hey. I know they're wrong to dislike you, you know they're wrong to dislike you, and anyone who goes around judging people without getting to know them first is too stupid to care about. Got it?" She poked him in the nose again for emphasis.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever, Yukiko-neechan," Naruto said, staring cross-eyed at the tip of his nose. "Stop poking me!"

Yukiko grinned. "Make me." She jabbed her finger forward, then laughed as the kid ducked under her hand and lunged to wrap his arms around her shins.

"Got you, Yukiko-neechan!" Naruto said. "Now you're trapped."

Yukiko twitched her feet experimentally, tapping her toes against Naruto's thighs. "Oh, really?" She tapped his legs again. As he looked down, she bent over and tickled the back of his neck. Naruto shrieked in startled laughter and rolled away.

"No fair!" he yelled. "Cheater! I didn't tickle you, did I?"

Yukiko stood from her chair. "So? We're ninja; anything that works is fair play. If you want payback, come and catch me," she said, and dashed out into the corridor. Her mission report could wait until the morning.

The afternoon degenerated into an unstructured game of tag and Naruto smiled all through dinner, his worries banished for now. Mission accomplished.

o-o-o-o-o

The next day was one of two weekly half days at the academy, a program intended to give clan children a chance to train in their family techniques without overworking themselves. Civilian children were left at loose ends unless they'd found a mentor. It was a subtle way to reinforce the status quo that the best ninja came from ninja families.

Naruto and Shinnin tended to spend their free afternoons running around Yukiko's back yard like hooligans, which was better training than it sounded - the traps made a decent obstacle course and tree climbing practice never went amiss. Yukiko figured she could start offering Shinnin more formal training come autumn and her second year at the academy, when her parents had grown more familiar with Naruto and realized that Shinnin was serious about her career choice. It wouldn't do for the kid's best friend to die from a simple lack of training.

This day, rather than head straight out back, Naruto and Shinnin came inside and knocked on Yukiko's office door with their new friend sandwiched between them.

"Yukiko-neechan? This is Haruno Sakura-chan, my new friend," Naruto said. "Me and Shinnin invited her over today and we're gonna have a picnic and stuff. Do you want to join us?"

Yukiko looked at the three kids in her doorway, wondering at the mismatched picture. Naruto was all in-your-face bravado and Shinnin's skinned knees and loud voice belied her delicate prettiness. Haruno Sakura had none of the others' confidence. She clung to the doorframe, ducking her head to let her pink hair hang in front of her face, and refused to meet Yukiko's eyes.

"You don't have to be scared, Sakura. Yukiko-san's really nice," Shinnin said to the other girl in what was apparently meant as a whisper. She grabbed Sakura's hand and tugged her forward into the office. "Come on, say hi."

"Hi," Sakura whispered, still not meeting anyone's eyes.

"Nice to meet you, Sakura," Yukiko said. "If these two brats give you any trouble, just tell me and I'll straighten them out, okay? Naruto, if you don't clean up my kitchen after yourself, no ramen for a week."

"You're mean, Yukiko-neechan," Naruto grumbled, but amazingly he didn't go off into a rant about the wonders of ramen. He just grabbed Sakura's other hand and led her across the hall into Yukiko's apartment. "Come on, Sakura-chan, tell us what's your favorite food so Shinnin can make it."

"Just because I know how to cook doesn't mean you get out of helping!" Shinnin said.

The apartment door slammed before Yukiko heard Sakura or Naruto answer. She looked down at her book of monthly rent tallies, debated whether to go bother Tsubume Emi about her perennially late payment, and picked up the telephone instead.

"What do you know about Haruno Sakura?" she asked when Iruka answered. "And do you want to come over for lunch? I might need some moral support when her parents pick her up this evening."

o-o-o-o-o

"I knew Sakura was having trouble with some of the more popular girls, but I wasn't aware it had gotten to the point where she was completely isolated," Iruka said. He sipped his tea and frowned as he watched Shinnin pull Sakura away from the picnic blanket and cajole her into playing some kind of running-and-chasing game. "Unfortunately, I think part of the problem is her intelligence - the other children see her as a teacher's pet - so if I step in, I may only make things worse."

"Huh. And here I thought being smart was a good thing," Yukiko said. Naruto glanced toward the tree where she and Iruka were sitting. Yukiko wound a little more chakra into the concealing genjutsu just in case. She still wasn't good enough to hold full invisibility during a fight, but trying to keep ahead of Naruto was very useful motivation for improving her skills. So far as the outside world was concerned, she and Iruka didn't exist right now.

"Any knife can become a weapon in your enemy's hand. Unless you have social skills or you genuinely don't care what other people think of you - well." Iruka shrugged. "Still, if she's willing to accept Naruto and Shinnin as friends, the problem seems solved."

Yukiko studied Sakura's face as the girl crouched behind a tree and watched Shinnin chase Naruto around the yard. "What do you mean, 'if she's willing to accept' them? Look at her - she's trying to convince herself this isn't a dream and that they're not playing tricks on her. That's not the problem. The problem is whether her parents will _let_ her be friends with Naruto."

"Oh. Right." Iruka sighed. "Shinnin's parents have come around somewhat. Surely Sakura's won't be too unreasonable?"

Yukiko snorted. "Optimist."

"There's no harm in believing the best of people," Iruka said.

Yukiko stared at him. "Really."

"Really," Iruka confirmed. "So long as you also plan for less fortunate outcomes." At Yukiko's wry laugh, he smiled. "I am a ninja, as you may recall. I know perfectly well how dark human nature can be. I just choose to think we can all rise above that darkness."

"You and Naruto. I think you're both insane, but whatever makes you happy." Yukiko drained the last of her tea and jumped down from her branch, closing her eyes as she landed to make sure she didn't lose her grip on the genjutsu. "Come inside and let's make some plans."

o-o-o-o-o

They ended up discarding ninety percent of their ideas several hours later, when Naruto explained that Sakura's parents wouldn't be picking her up because they didn't know where she was.

"What?" Yukiko said.

Sakura turned pink and stared at the floor. Shinnin had the grace to look slightly uncomfortable, but she didn't seem ashamed. Naruto just shrugged. "Sakura-chan told them she was going to a friend's house for the afternoon, and she did go to a friend's house. Her parents just don't know _which_ house. We didn't lie - we were sneaky. Anything that works is fair play, right?"

Yukiko turned and thumped her forehead against the doorframe of her apartment. "Yeah. You learn fast, kid." Too fast, sometimes.

Naruto beamed.

"Be that as it may, it's time for you to get home for dinner," Iruka said, resting his hand on Naruto's shoulder and smiling at the three children. "Shall we all go to Sakura's house together, or would you like me to take you home separately, Shinnin?"

Shinnin and Naruto exchanged a fidgety stare followed by surreptitious poking gestures - probably wondering which option would result in the fewest adults yelling at them and the greatest chance of being allowed to spend time with Sakura in the future. Before they descended into outright shoving, Sakura raised her head. "I want everyone to meet my parents," she said, an unexpected note of steel in her voice. "I want them to see what real friends are like, and that it's wrong to let other people tell them what to think about people instead of making up their own minds." She reached sideways and grabbed Naruto's hand. "If it's wrong for Haruka to make everyone hate me, it's wrong for people to hate Naruto-kun, too."

Naruto looked as if she'd hit him over the head with a wheelbarrow full of bricks.

"I told you she was too smart to be a jerk!" Shinnin said, jumping up and down in excitement. "Didn't I tell you? I don't care what your parents say, Sakura - they can't make us not be friends at school, and we can just be sneaky the rest of the time. We won't let Haruka hurt you anymore."

She hugged Sakura from behind, making the other girl squeak in surprise. "Oh. Um. Thanks?" Sakura said, still clinging to Naruto's hand.

"It's a promise!" Naruto said, turning to add his free arm to the hug. "Hey, hey, and when we pass the academy, we'll all be on a team together, 'cause teams are like family and we're gonna be best friends forever."

"Ah, about that," Iruka started, clearly wondering how to explain that genin teams were assigned on the basis of talents and clan affiliations, not childhood friendships. Yukiko reached over the kids' heads and tapped him on the arm. She shook her head, then shaped a tiger seal.

_Let them have their illusions for now_, she whispered into Iruka's mind.

He blinked. "Shouldn't I be saying that to you?" he whispered.

Yukiko shrugged, embarrassed. "The kid gets to me now and then. I think turning people's opinions around is his secret bloodline limit or something. And speaking of opinionated people, shouldn't we be taking Sakura back to her family?"

"Right, of course," Iruka said, and began carefully untangling the group hug and wiping grass stains and dirt off the kids' faces and limbs. Yukiko watched for a moment, then went to fetch her chuunin vest from the back of her closet. The more authority she and Iruka could project toward Sakura's parents, the better.

o-o-o-o-o

Sakura lived halfway across town in one of the civilian-majority districts near the heart of the village, well away from the walls. Her house was small and neat, a whitewashed two story affair with wide bamboo eaves, sandwiched in a row of nearly identical buildings. The roof was lined with planters, half filled with small fruit trees covered in spring blossom, half with decorative grasses - an attractive way of creating a bit of privacy and green space for the family to relax. More flowerboxes graced the front windows and the narrow strip of ground between the street and the house was groomed into a tiny rock garden.

One of Sakura's parents clearly worked from home or had no paying job if she or he had the time to put that much care into appearances. Yukiko thought about her own buildings with their haphazard surroundings, and wondered if it might break the ice to ask Sakura's parents if they could recommend a good landscaper to fix up her properties.

Probably not, but she ought to look into that anyway.

Naruto and Shinnin hung back around her legs as Iruka led Sakura forward and pressed a button beside a cheerful blue door with a glass panel at head-height - obvious civilian construction. After a minute, a thin woman with white-blonde hair and an artist's smock over her clothes opened the door wide, not bothering with even a chain lock. "Welcome home, Sakura! Who's your guest?" she said, wiping her paint-daubed hands on a cloth she then tossed carelessly onto a mail table.

"_Mom_, the _lock_," Sakura said, sounding mortified. "Don't just open the door for strangers!"

Yukiko stifled a laugh.

"We live in the middle of the best-defended city in Fire Country," Haruno-san said, bending down to tuck a strand of pink hair behind her daughter's ear. "Besides, you'll protect your father and me now that you're learning to be a ninja."

"_Mom!_" Sakura said. She squirmed away. "Um, this is Iruka-sensei, but he's not important. I wanted you to meet my new friends." She pointed down the walk to where Yukiko and the other kids were waiting. "That's Kigaru Shinnin-chan and that's Uzumaki Naruto-kun. They stopped Haruka from picking on me at lunch and invited me over this afternoon. I want to have them come here after school tomorrow."

Shinnin dashed forward to meet Sakura's mother. Naruto didn't move for a second, uncharacteristically shy. Yukiko walked forward, pressing between the kid's shoulders to move him along with her.

Haruno-san's pleasant smile had frozen into a sort of polite grimace. "Ah. Hello, Shinnin-chan. And you," she added, nodding awkwardly at Yukiko. She made no move to acknowledge Naruto.

"I'm Ayakawa Yukiko, Naruto's guardian," Yukiko said, trying desperately to keep her tone polite. "I wanted to compliment you on your daughter - she's a wonderfully intelligent, friendly, and open-minded person. Naruto and Shinnin like her very much and I would be happy to let her come over to my building any time."

"Ah," Haruno-san said again. She glanced down at Naruto, and reached out to grab Sakura's shoulder and tug her daughter toward her. "I'm not certain that will be possible. I don't like Sakura wandering the streets alone, and I think it's better for her to socialize with a larger group of children in the public parks, not isolate herself with only one or two."

Naruto pressed closer to Yukiko's legs. Shinnin scowled and grabbed hold of Sakura's arm, tugging the other girl away from her mother. "She wouldn't be alone! She'd be with us! And it's not better for her to be around the other kids when Haruka hates her and makes them all pick on her until she cries. If you don't like Naruto, just say so - don't pretend and talk around him like he isn't here."

Haruno-san flushed. "Watch your mouth, young lady!"

Shinnin lunged forward, clearly preparing to kick Haruno-san's legs. Before Haruno-san or Sakura could react, Iruka swooped down and picked Shinnin up, one arm wrapped around her shoulders and the other sweeping up to catch the backs of her knees and remove her leverage. "Remember your manners, Shinnin," he said calmly. "We don't use taijutsu on our own civilians. It's dishonorable when they've trusted their safety to our protection."

Haruno-san gaped in shock. "What?" Her hand groped helplessly toward Sakura's shoulder.

Sakura sidestepped neatly. "This is why you use the lock, Mom," she said. "It keeps the door between you and anyone you want to argue with." She looked back at Shinnin and frowned. "And don't hit my mom! Only jerks do stuff like that."

Shinnin, cradled in Iruka's arms like a worn-out toddler, turned bright red and mumbled an apology.

Behind Yukiko's legs, Naruto giggled.

Yukiko looked at Iruka, hoping he had some idea - any idea - for detangling themselves from social awkwardness. He dealt with kids and parents for a living; surely he could think of something.

"Haruno-san, I apologize for my students," Iruka said, setting Shinnin back on her feet but keeping his hands tight on her shoulders. "I did want to speak to you about Sakura's excellent performance at the academy, among other things. Would you mind if Yukiko takes your daughter and her friends to get a snack while we talk?"

Haruno-san blinked and seemed to settle at Iruka's calm tone and the wave of neutral intent he projected. Her hand dropped to her side. "I suppose not," she said slowly. Then she glanced down at Naruto and frowned. "But only if they stay in the house and out of my studio and my husband's study. Sakura, why don't you show your guests the rooftop garden?"

As Sakura hesitated, Yukiko snagged Shinnin's hand and tugged the girl forward to stand beside Naruto. She tilted her head toward the open door and said, "Will you show us around? You've seen my place, but I bet yours is nicer." It was certainly less utilitarian.

Sakura glanced from Iruka to her mother, checking for signs of imminent explosions. Then she smiled at Naruto and Shinnin. "Sure. Come on in and I'll show you our garden - it's the best! We have oranges in the greenhouse and I have two rabbits. If you're careful, you can pick them up and pet them and stuff."

"Really? Cool!" Naruto said, abandoning Yukiko's side and darting into Sakura's house without bothering to take off his sandals. Sakura charged after him, yelling about the floors. Yukiko and Shinnin followed more slowly. As Shinnin pried off her sandals and tossed them in the general direction of the shoe stand, Yukiko closed the door.

Naruto and Sakura had already vanished up the narrow staircase, but their voices were clearly audible from the second floor, along with the clatter of a ladder dropping from the ceiling.

"Don't break anything," Yukiko told Shinnin. The girl nodded and chased after her friends, bare feet silent on the polished wooden floorboards.

She ought to follow and keep an eye on the kids, but Yukiko hesitated, glancing back at the closed door with an itchy need to know what Iruka and Haruno-san were saying. And really, how much trouble could three kids and a pair of rabbits get into in under ten minutes?

Stupid question, of course - especially when two of the kids were Naruto and Shinnin - but if she didn't trust them on their own, how could she ask Haruno-san to do the same?

Rationalization firmly in place, Yukiko wove a quick genjutsu to silence her steps and blur her chakra. Then she edged up to the door and pressed her ear to the painted wood.

o-o-o-o-o

"-score in the class on the latest geography test," Iruka was saying. "Her math and reading skills are equally good, and she shows an excellent grasp of basic chakra theory as well."

"Thank you for telling me," Haruno-san said, sounding both proud and vaguely bewildered. "But what do Sakura's accomplishments have to do with- with-"

"With Naruto?" Iruka finished. He sighed. "I don't know what Sakura has told you, but Zenryou Haruka, one of the students she outshines in theoretical work, hasn't taken well to being upstaged by a civilian. Haruka is very popular. She's used her position to turn the rest of the class against Sakura, whether by actively tormenting her or simply by stepping back to let the bullying occur unhindered. You said that you'd prefer your daughter to socialize with a larger group of her peers? That isn't an option. Her choices are friendship with Naruto and Shinnin - who are kind enough and brave enough to ignore Haruka's anger - or complete isolation."

Silence.

Yukiko pressed her lips together, uncomfortable at the way Iruka was manipulating the conversation. Yes, almost everything he said was true, and yes, this was the best way to shake Haruno-san out of her reflexive rejection of Naruto, but that was a terrible thing to drop on a parent. Iruka had almost made it sound as if Sakura's isolation were her own fault. He certainly hadn't mentioned any other potential solutions, such as having a private meeting with the Zenryou clan and requiring them to discipline their daughter.

Sarutobi Hokage-sama had done the same to her when he'd dumped Naruto into her care - made her think the only two options were keeping the kid or turning him out onto the street - but that was never true. There were always other options. Ninja found other options as a matter of professional pride, even when they didn't need to be roundabout.

"I'm sorry, Haruno-san," Iruka said, breaking the silence. "Because Haruka is jealous of Sakura's academic performance, I can't speak to either of them without Haruka interpreting my intervention as a further sign of favor to Sakura. Shinnin and Naruto, on the other hand, are already isolated. If Sakura joins them, Haruka may take that as a sign of victory and switch to ignoring your daughter."

"Being shunned is the _good_ option?" Haruno-san said, her voice thin and sharp.

"In this case it's the lesser of two evils," Iruka said. "Besides, I've seen Sakura smile more times this afternoon than in the past month. Two true friends who will guard her back through Haruka's wrath are more valuable than any number of casual friends who abandoned her at the first sign of trouble."

Silence again. Yukiko held her breath.

"You are a very lucky young man," Haruno-san said eventually, each word careful and precise. "If I had ever attended your academy, you would be on the ground screaming now."

Amazingly, Iruka laughed.

After a second, Haruno-san snorted. "As I said, a very lucky young man. I'll admit that you may - _may_ - have a point about Sakura's old friends. But I still don't trust that Uzumaki boy, and I suspect that if I gave this Zenryou Haruka's parents a piece of my mind, Sakura's troubles might ease a lot faster than you're insinuating."

Behind the door, Yukiko smiled. Sakura clearly got her brains from her mother. And if Haruno-san was thinking instead of simply reacting, Iruka's work was done. Time to stop eavesdropping and make sure the kids hadn't destroyed the garden or lost control of Sakura's pet rabbits.

She toed off her sandals and hurried away from the door, unraveling her genjutsu as she went. She needed to be safely out of sight before Haruno-san asked Iruka inside.

Yukiko was halfway up the narrow stairs when a massive crash echoed down from the roof.

o-o-o-o-o

She was never sure, afterwards, how she'd gotten to the rooftop. Logically a ladder must have been involved, but Yukiko had no memory of climbing it. If she didn't know her ninjutsu limitations she would have suspected herself of teleportation.

Her first thought, as she stared at the remains of the greenhouse, was that she shouldn't have taken off her sandals downstairs. Broken glass littered the roof, razor edges and sand-like fragments glittering in the slanted rays of the evening sun. Naruto lay sprawled in the middle of the chaos, arms gripping a squirming brown rabbit and legs held very still as Sakura crouched over him, brushing shards off his clothes. Shinnin was off to the side, having sensibly climbed onto the wickerwork table to keep her feet safe.

Shinnin noticed Yukiko first, and winced. "We can explain, Yukiko-san!" she blurted. "It was the rabbits' fault."

"Rabbits broke the greenhouse," Yukiko said skeptically, looking around for some way to protect her feet. She spotted a broom and dustpan leaning against the little curved shelter over the trap door entrance, and a stack of empty plastic flowerpots on the other side of the shelter. She grabbed the broom and pulled two pots off the top. They weren't very big, but her feet were fairly small and she only needed them for a minute.

Shinnin winced again as Yukiko tipped the pots on their sides, slid her feet into them, and shuffled toward the disaster area, sweeping as she went. "Kind of? We were petting them, except the rabbit bit me, and I dropped it, and it tried to run away, and Sakura said we had to catch it before it jumped off the roof, and Naruto tripped on the hose, and... um... fell." She waved her hand toward the other two kids, who stared nervously at Yukiko.

The rabbit squirmed again. Naruto tightened his arms around it, pressing the animal to his chest. "I kept Tsuki-chan safe!" he said, as if that were the important thing. Sakura nodded in fervent agreement.

Yukiko didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Someone coughed behind her. "I'll go back downstairs and fetch shoes for those who need them. Please excuse me," Iruka said. A tiny breeze marked him vanishing faster than any civilian could manage.

Yukiko turned, hoping against hope that Haruno-san hadn't followed Iruka up.

Luck was not with her.

Sakura's mother stood on the ladder, her arms resting on the lip of the trap door as she surveyed the ruins of her greenhouse. The far wall and half the roof were intact, and the metal frame of the two sides still stood, but glass littered the dwarf orange trees and the exotic Water Country flowers it had sheltered. The pots next to Naruto and Sakura were shoved sideways from impact and the near wall of the greenhouse was bent and broken beyond easy repair, even if replacement glass panels had been right at hand.

Haruno-san bent her head down to rest on her arms for a moment. "I told Senzai I wasn't cut out to be a mother," she muttered, too quietly for the kids to overhear. Then she raised her head and frowned at her daughter. "Haruno Sakura. What happened here?"

Sakura flushed, but amazingly kept her head upright and met her mother's eyes. "We were petting the rabbits, but Tsuki-chan bit Shinnin-chan and jumped off her lap. I dropped Niji-chan in the hutch and we all tried to catch Tsuki-chan before he could jump the wall. Naruto-kun grabbed him, but he tripped on the hose and fell into the greenhouse. It's not his fault! It just happened. So punish me instead of him. I should've remembered to tell Shinnin-chan that Tsuki-chan can get mean."

"It wasn't Sakura-chan's fault! I dropped the rabbit," Shinnin said before Haruno-san could respond.

"Because he bit you," Sakura said, turning to frown at her. "Look, your thumb's bleeding. Mom, can you open the medicine cabinet? We should get Shinnin-chan a bandage."

"Yeah, and you too, Sakura-chan!" Naruto chimed in, sitting up with his arms still locked around the squirming rabbit. "See, see, you've got scratches all up your arms." Then he turned to look at Haruno-san, his expression gone serious. "You can't be mad at Sakura-chan, 'cause none of this was her fault. I'm the one who ran up here and didn't wait for her to tell us about the rabbits, and I fell on your greenhouse and broke it. You can yell at me, 'cause I'm used to it, but if you yell at Sakura-chan you're stupid and mean just like Haruka, and me and Shinnin won't let you. We're friends with Sakura-chan now and we won't let anyone make her sad anymore."

Naruto nodded firmly, as if agreeing with himself, and jumped to his feet. "I'll go put Tsuki-chan back now. You should make sure Shinnin and Sakura-chan are okay." Sakura clambered upright and followed him. Shinnin trailed after, edging on tiptoe around the scatter of broken glass and vanishing behind the curved shelter that guarded the trap door.

Yukiko watched them go in bemusement. She'd always known the kid was weird, but volunteering to get yelled at? When she knew how much he hated the way people jumped to the worst possible interpretation of anything he did? Yeah, he was trying to protect his friends - and it was cute that they were all trying to take the fall for each other - but still.

Behind her, Haruno-san made a peculiar strangled noise, as if stifling something halfway between laughter and a scream. "Are they always like this?" she murmured.

Yukiko thought about the conversation she'd eavesdropped on and decided a white lie would be counterproductive. "I can't speak for Sakura, but for the other two? Yes. They're a handful. I think it comes naturally at that age." She looked at the worst of the glass, then down at her flowerpot shoes, and started shuffling back toward the clear ground by the trap door.

"I wouldn't know. Sakura has never brought friends home before," Haruno-san said.

Oh.

"This is an awful first impression, isn't it?" Yukiko said. "I'm sorry. I should have gotten up here faster to keep an eye on the kids. I know what they're like, after all. I promise I'm usually much better at keeping things unbroken. Sakura was perfectly safe at my building today - the kids had a picnic and ran around outside, that's all. I can make sure she's never around Naruto unsupervised, if you'd prefer." It would be beyond frustrating for the kid not to be allowed to invite his new friend over when Yukiko was out of town on missions, but half a meal was better than nothing, right?

Haruno-san pressed her forehead into her arms again, taking a deep breath. "I'm beginning to suspect that leaving any group of children unsupervised is a bad idea. Sakura on her own is well-behaved. She likes to read and help me garden. There's not much scope for trouble there."

Yukiko pictured what Naruto could get up to with garden implements or one of Kakashi's little books. She bit her tongue.

"But Sakura shouldn't always be on her own," Haruno-san continued. "It occurs to me that I should have wondered why she hasn't ever brought friends home or run around breaking things. That's what I did at her age. I can't say I like her choice in friends, but she's terribly stubborn once she makes up her mind. If I forbid her from spending time with them, she'll only learn to disobey me."

Yukiko made a noncommittal noise and restacked her borrowed flowerpots.

Haruno-san sighed and lifted her head. "I give my daughter permission to visit your home, but only so long as an adult is present to supervise. Furthermore, I want her home by five o'clock every day. If those requirements aren't met, or if something unacceptable happens on your watch, I _will_ come pick her up from the academy and take her straight home myself every day. I don't want her alone with that boy."

"Hey! I'd be there too!" Shinnin said, leaning around the shelter.

"Yeah! What if we go to Shinnin's house? Are you gonna be all weird about that too?" Naruto said, appearing unexpectedly at Yukiko's side. He frowned at Haruno-san. "I don't get into as much trouble as Kiba and his stupid dog and I'm lots nicer than Haruka or that jerk Sasuke, but nobody looks at them like they look at me. Yukiko-neechan says people who go around thinking bad stuff about people without getting to know them are just stupid, but Sakura-chan's not stupid. You're her mom, so you shouldn't be stupid either. So why don't you like me?"

Shinnin and Sakura lined up beside him and stared at Haruno-san, waiting for an answer. Yukiko clapped a hand over her eyes and wondered if she could use genjutsu to erase the entire afternoon and start over. The demolished greenhouse could be written off as a freak accident caused by genin on a cat-retrieval mission, right?

...No, that was too much cheating even for a ninja to rationalize. Damn.

Haruno-san was silent for a long moment, frowning. Yukiko could guess what she was thinking: the Third Hokage's law made it impossible for her to explain the true reason for her dislike of Naruto, and what other reason would seem sensible and fair to a trio of seven-year-old kids? Not that Yukiko thought fear of the Kyuubi was fair or sensible either, but at least it was a reason instead of what might as well be complete insanity from the kids' perspective.

"I won't tell you why I distrust you," Haruno-san said eventually. "The reason is complicated and tied up in things that happened before you were born, and is also forbidden to talk about with people who don't already know. You're training to be a ninja. You should understand the need for secrets. As for why I don't like you - would you like someone who came into your home without warning, broke your things, and told you that someone you care about-"

"Like Yukiko-neechan? And I said I was sorry about the greenhouse, and you invited us in, so that's not fair," Naruto interrupted.

"You still shouldn't have run up here with your shoes on," Haruno-san said. "And yes, suppose someone told you that your guardian had been lying to you when she said everything was fine. Would you be happy to hear that?"

Sakura flinched. Shinnin grabbed her arm and leaned in to whisper something in her ear.

Naruto frowned at Haruno-san. "Of course I wouldn't be happy! But I'd go talk to Yukiko-neechan, not get mad at other people. You should stop making Sakura-chan sad. Moms aren't supposed to do that."

Despite herself, Yukiko laughed. "Oh, kid, you have no idea. Parents make their kids sad and angry all the time. It's in the job description." She reached down and ruffled his spiky yellow hair. "Being family doesn't make everything perfect. It just means you care enough to keep forgiving each other and trying to do better. Speaking of which, how about we go downstairs and get everyone cleaned up?"

"Yes, let's," said Haruno-san hastily. She climbed back down the ladder into the upstairs hallway and waited while Yukiko sent the three kids down one by one - first Sakura, then Shinnin, then Naruto.

Yukiko swung the trap door shut as she followed them inside. "Where do you keep bandages and disinfectant?" she asked.

"The large kit is downstairs. Sakura practices in the back garden," Haruno-san said, and led the way along the hallway to the switchback staircase against the wall.

"-history quiz," Iruka was saying from the ground floor. "She has an excellent memory for facts and a gift for integrating information. She also has very good physical coordination for someone not raised in a family with a strong ninja tradition, though she can't match most of her classmates in stamina and agility."

"Can't match _yet_," an unfamiliar male voice broke in. Sakura's father?

"Well, yes and no," Iruka said. "Conditioning and stretches will certainly help, but some people will always be stronger or more limber than others - those are their talents - just as Sakura's particular gift is her mind. We want all the children to have a decent grounding in all the basics by the time they graduate, but it's also good if they put in extra work in one or two areas where they especially shine. We try to balance teams so one genin's weakness is offset by a partner's strength. That's easier if each child has a specialty. Clan children come by their specialties naturally, but those from civilian families need to put more thought into it. I'd advise Sakura to focus on something that requires control and thought rather than something that requires deep chakra reserves or brute physical talent."

Haruno-san was frowning as she started down the stairs, stepping on several slightly creaky boards with what looked like deliberate intent. "Senzai, welcome home. I see you've encountered one of our unexpected guests," she said as she reached the landing.

"So I have," Sakura's father said, looking up with a wide smile. He had deep red hair, so dark it looked nearly like arterial blood in the slanted afternoon sunlight. "Umino-sensei, I presume you've already met Tanrei, who does me the honor of pretending to be my wife, and Sakura-chan, who does me the favor of being my chief joy and delight."

"_Dad_," Sakura said, sounding mortified.

Her father simply laughed. Then he caught sight of Naruto and his smile faded into a puzzled almost-frown. "Hello, who are you?" he said.

"Uzumaki Naruto!" the kid proclaimed. "I don't care if you don't like me. Sakura-chan's my friend and that's that. But she got scratched by the glass, so me and Shinnin and Yukiko-neechan and her mom are gonna get her fixed up and stuff."

Yukiko hurried the kids the rest of the way down the stairs and offered Haruno Senzai a falsely cheerful smile. "Sorry about the mess. I'm Ayakawa Yukiko, Naruto's guardian. I own and manage two apartment buildings near the northeast wall."

"Pleased to meet you," Haruno Senzai said. His gaze caught on her chuunin vest for a moment, then slid to his wife in obvious confusion.

"Sakura spent the afternoon at Ayakawa-san's home, with her new friends," Haruno Tanrei said, giving her husband a significant look. "I've agreed that they can spend time together, _with_ adult supervision, until five o'clock in the afternoon on school days."

"I see," said Senzai, which was a blatant lie.

Iruka glanced at Yukiko and twitched his fingers in a tiny, abbreviated question. Yukiko stifled a frustrated sigh. "If our kids are going to spend a lot of time at each other's places, we should get to know each other and hash out some rules," she said. "Iruka, would you mind bandaging the kids? Tanrei-san said the first aid kit is downstairs, in-" Wait. _Where_ downstairs?

"-in the kitchen," Tanrei said, filling in the pause so smoothly anyone else might never have noticed it forming. "Please, there's no need. You are guests in our house. Let us take care of our own mishaps."

"Oh, it won't be a problem!" Iruka said cheerfully, and whisked his three students away before either of Sakura's parents could protest.

Senzai was still clearly off balance and Yukiko didn't want to give Tanrei a chance to retract the limited permission she'd already given. It seemed a bit unfair to treat Konoha civilians as if they were foreigners she was trying to turn from obstacles to assets, but she was a ninja, cheating only counted if she got caught, and this was for their daughter's good anyway.

Yukiko sat down on the nearby couch, folded her hands in her lap, and offered the Harunos her best contract-negotiation smile. "I guess it's just us, huh. So. Hi. Again. I'm Ayakawa Yukiko, Naruto's big sister. Our kids have both been lonely for a long time, but now they've decided to be friends. Let's talk about how we're going to help them do that."

o-o-o-o-o

"What'd Sakura-chan's mom and dad say?" Naruto asked as he and Yukiko walked away from the Haruno house half an hour later, parting ways with Iruka and Shinnin. "They didn't do any take-backs, right? Sakura-chan can still come over to our place, right? Or we can all go to Shinnin's house, right? Right?" He slowed down, dragging his steps and hanging on Yukiko's hand like a deadweight.

"Hey. Would I let you down, kid?" Yukiko asked.

"Nooooo, but sometimes people just kinda stink," Naruto said. "So? Come on, tell me!"

"Sakura is still allowed over to our building," Yukiko said, squeezing Naruto's hand. "With restrictions! And I don't know about you guys going to Shinnin's house because Tanrei-san and Senzai-san said they needed to discuss that with her family. But yeah, no take-backs."

Naruto dropped Yukiko's hand and stood motionless for a long second. Then he leapt and punched the air. "Ha! Yeah! Take that! I knew they couldn't be stupid 'cause Sakura-chan's not stupid. We're gonna be the best friends ever, and the best ninja ever, and we'll show everyone that we're awesome. So there!"

"Sounds like a plan," Yukiko said, reaching down to ruffle the kid's hair.

Naruto made an awful face and flailed his hands until he caught her wrist. "Ugh, stop it, no fair! Just 'cause I'm shorter than you..."

Yukiko grinned and relented, dropping her trapped hand to her side. "The world's not fair, kid. If you want me to stop, learn to stop me. Or get taller."

"I'm gonna be so much taller than you someday. Taller than everyone!" Naruto grumbled as he let go with one hand and shifted the other into a more normal grip.

They walked in silence for several minutes through increasingly crowded streets, the pretty houses of the civilian district giving way to taller, more crowded buildings with shops of all kinds on their ground floors, people spilling into and out of doorways in noisy clumps. Neon signs were starting to turn on as the shadows grew and the air darkened through gold and blue into purple dusk. The scent of a hundred restaurants and food stalls swirled through the air in a mouth-watering jumble, reminding Yukiko that she and Iruka had forgotten to eat lunch.

Nrgh. She turned down a narrow side-street, heading for the nearest park. Better to avoid temptation if she wanted to set a good example for the kid.

The crowd thinned as they left the press of buildings, sounds and scents receding as they walked toward the river that meandered its carefully channeled way through the village. Yukiko slowed as they crossed a painted bridge, tipping her head back to catch the first evening stars.

"So how'd you do it?" Naruto asked.

Yukiko stopped and looked down. "Do what?"

"Talk them into it. Sakura-chan's parents still don't like me, and I bet they wish she'd be friends with Shinnin and forget about me. I bet Shinnin's parents'd like that too. It'd probably be better for Shinnin and Sakura-chan, even, since they'd still have each other and I wouldn't be around making problems."

"It would've been rude for Tanrei-san to go back on her word," Yukiko temporized.

"Really, really, really rude!" Naruto agreed. "But life's not fair. You said people who don't like me are just being stupid and I shouldn't care about them, but... I dunno, there's _lots_ of people who don't like me and they can't _all_ be bad people. If they shouldn't judge me before they know me, I shouldn't judge them either, right? And Tanrei-san said she had a reason not to like me, just that it was a secret, and... um..."

Yukiko scooped the kid up to sit on the bridge railing, and wrapped him in a hug. Naruto flailed. Then he flung his arms around her neck and buried his face in her shoulder.

"I don't want to be alone," he whispered.

Oh, help. Yukiko patted Naruto's back and groped awkwardly for the right words. "Hey. Kid. You're not alone. You have me. You have Iruka. You have Naga and Taizen-san. You have Shinnin, and now Sakura as well. You're making new friends all the time. Yeah, it's hard, but you're a fighter. I believe in you. So do all your other friends, and you know the best thing? We'll all fight with you, so every time you make a new friend it'll be easier to make the next."

"What's fighting got to do with it? You can't make friends by hitting people," Naruto said.

"Maybe not with civilians, but it's a time-honored tradition among ninja," Yukiko assured him. Naruto pulled back and gave her a disbelieving look. "I swear by all the kami, that's how I got to be friends with my old genin team. Hoshi-sensei made us fight in three-way melee battles until we got sick of them and teamed up on him instead. And then we were friends."

"If you say so, Yukiko-neechan," Naruto said. "But Sakura-chan's parents aren't ninja. How'd you make them keep their word?"

Yukiko swung herself up onto the bridge railing beside Naruto and kicked her heels lightly against the wood of the lower rail. "Honestly? I didn't need to do much. Tanrei-san made an implicit promise, Senzai-san agreed it was okay to at least try out the arrangement, and that was that. I just reminded them that parents are supposed to set good examples for their kids, which they wanted to do anyway because they're basically good people."

Naruto elbowed her in the side. "Yeah, yeah, but what else? You were smiling your sneaky smile when we left! You can't fool me."

"I may have offered to give Sakura supplemental practical training on half-day afternoons, since she doesn't have any clan relatives to teach her," Yukiko said, looking up at the darkening sky. "Which conveniently requires her to come over to our place and hang out with you. But that was only icing on the cake - her parents probably would have agreed without that. Once they get to know you, I'm sure they wouldn't try to keep you away from Sakura even if I never teach her a thing."

"Oh," Naruto said. "Hey, hey, does that mean you'll teach Shinnin too? 'Cause none of her family's a ninja either and it's not fair to teach Sakura-chan and not Shinnin."

"I thought we agreed that life isn't fair," Yukiko said, tapping the kid on his nose.

Naruto elbowed her again. "We should try to _make_ it fair! Unfair stinks. That's what I'm going to fight for when I'm a ninja - to make the world stop being unfair."

Yukiko closed her eyes, remembering herself at his age. _"I want to be the best ninja in Konoha so I can protect everyone,"_ she'd told her mother. _"Our clan always builds things and fixes things - I want to keep them from getting broken. That's my dream, to protect Konoha!"_ She'd had no idea how hard it was to protect a single person, let alone an entire city. Kids had no sense of scale. They dreamed such impossible, beautiful dreams.

"You can't change the world by hitting things, kid," Yukiko said, wrapping her arm around Naruto's shoulders.

"Why not? If you can make friends by fighting, why can't you change people's minds by hitting them? Besides, I'm gonna be a ninja! That means I can fight as sneaky as I want, 'cause it's only cheating if it doesn't work or you get caught," Naruto said. He nodded firmly. "Yeah. Ninjutsu and taijutsu are awesome, but you can hit people with words and it hurts just as bad. That's what Haruka did to Sakura-chan, what some of Shinnin's old friends did to her, and what all kinds of people do to me. I'm gonna learn how to do that too. _That's_ how I'll change the world."

"But also with a bunch of traps and blowing stuff up, right?"

"Well, _yeah_," Naruto agreed. "'Cause sometimes you've gotta knock people down before you can make them listen. And explosions are awesome! Duh."

"Explosions can be pretty cool," Yukiko agreed, struggling to keep laughter out of her voice.

"You know what else is cool? Ramen! Ramen is cool and awesome and delicious and also I cleaned your kitchen today so you should buy us some for dinner." Naruto slid down from the railing and bounced on his toes, turning back to face the center of town that blazed with neon signs and window-lights like an oasis in the newborn night. "Ichiraku-san said if we eat at his stand at least twice a week he might give us a frequent customer discount. You like discounts! It's, um, fishally responsible and everything! Please, Yukiko-neechan? Pleeeeeease?"

Yukiko gave up on stifling her laughter. "Yeah, okay, you've had a big day. We can celebrate with ramen, but it's salad tomorrow and the next day. Or else!"

"I'll just have to make you change your mind," Naruto said with a blinding grin, and grabbed her hand as she slid off the railing. "Come on, let's get dinner!"

They headed into town together.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

**End of Story**

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

**AN:** Thanks for reading, and please review! I'm particularly interested in knowing what parts of the story worked for you, what parts didn't, and _why_.


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